This is going to be a kind of general survey thread, but I was thinking of this today and thought I'd see what interpretations others had.
How many out there thought that the Death Star trench sequence took place along the Death Star's equatorial ridge upon their first (or first few dozen) viewings? I was almost 12 when I saw Star Wars on the big screen for the first time, late in the summer of 1977. My earliest impressions were that the "trench" and the equator were one in the same. It was only many years and dozens of viewings later that I realized my error. Was anyone else laboring under this misaprehension?

bigbarada

09-10-2001, 02:30 PM

To be honest I've always thought that was the trench they were flying through.:o I think it was all the references to "The Death Star Trench" not "one of the Death Star trenches" that led to my misconception.

If the trench wasn't at the equator then where was it?

El Chuxter

09-10-2001, 02:57 PM

I, too, once believed this. After I found that was incorrect, I believed for a while that the exhaust port was the dot in the center of the superlaser.

JEDIpartner

09-10-2001, 03:07 PM

I, too, laboured under this perception for many years. I basically thought about it (after seeing many production sketches) and decided they could not be one and the same due to the narrow width of the trench. The confusing part of the trench location lies in the "technical readouts of that battlestation". The superlaser seems to be located AT the equator on that screen next to Dodonna. Notice how the close-ups progress... it still appears that the trench is at the equator... but again, there is the issue with the superlaser.

Perhaps I'm still off my mong, but if there's anyone with some sort of schematic as to where the trench is located I would gladly review it!

Starfig873

09-10-2001, 07:04 PM

Hmm...I still don't know the exact location for sure...but how can the exhaust port be in the dot of the superlaser? The area is clearly boxed in and has to be on another section of the Death Star.

JediTricks

09-11-2001, 05:43 AM

As a kid, I also thought it was in the equatorial trench. I don't remember the cheesy atari-quality graphcs from the rebel briefing well enough to be sure of this, but I think the trench graphic even pops out of the equator, which would obviously be a good reason to think this.

However, the thermal exhaust port is actually in a trench 3/4ths of the way from the equator to the northern pole, according to everything I've read.

JediCole

09-12-2001, 06:31 PM

If memory serves, it appears that the trench runs a north/south line along the northern hemisphere on one side of the Death Star. I will grant that the laser dish seems strangely out of place on the readout, however. I will need to review this week to be sure.

JediTricks

09-13-2001, 12:47 PM

yes, the graphics show the dish in the center. These were probably done when preliminary designs still had the Death Star wearing its main dish at its equator (I didn't even know there was an early design with the dish in the middle till a couple days ago when I visited SW.com, that's where I got that info).

Lobito

09-21-2001, 04:42 PM

Its true, the graphic of the death star that is presented in the movie is incorrect, its not the same as the actual death star. The green graphic shows the super laser right in the middle of the ecuatorial line, but the laser is actually a little bit higher from the line. Nice discovery cole!!:cool:

Slicker

09-03-2006, 09:39 PM

I too thought that they were cruising down the middle of it but after looking around one day I kinda figured things out.

There are north-south trenches that start at the north pole of the Death Star and fan out from there. The Rebels travelled in one of them and they actually show you in the movie. When the graphic is pulled up it starts to zoom in and shows where the attack is going to start. Just cue it up and you'll see.

EDIT: Just lookin' at times and I noticed that JT posted only 2 and a half hours before the WTC attacks. :(

2-1B

09-03-2006, 10:31 PM

Slicker, they don't have penquins at the north pole, only the south pole.

JediTricks

09-05-2006, 09:20 PM

EDIT: Just lookin' at times and I noticed that JT posted only 2 and a half hours before the WTC attacks. :(Weird, I remember much of that morning but not making that post. I used to stay up till 5am and would post late overnight, that day I stayed up a little later for no reason, was watching the lightweight morning news when the attacks happened and we saw the second hit live, it was awful, I came online and started talking to Steve and other people about it, then tried to do some crowd-control in the forums and keep people from overhyping (people were talking about 50,000 dead), I stayed on till the mid-afternoon and had a VERY difficult time sleeping.

tagmac

09-07-2006, 05:03 PM

Sounds a lot like what we did on the NY Rangers board that day. A bunch of us kept posting back and forth as more known posters from the NY area joined to let us know they were alright. We must have hit over 200 posts in only a few hours on a single thread that day. :(